As the airline continues to recover from the pandemic, the chairman and CEO of Dubai’s Emirates Airline revealed on Tuesday that the company has already hired more than 6,000 new cabin crew and placed nearly 60% of its flagship Airbus A380 superjumbo back in service.
In order to combat the initial wave of the pandemic, the UAE government shut the country’s borders and restricted travel in early 2020, forcing Emirates to ground its entire fleet.
Although the airline was only permitted to resume operations in July 2020, Emirates, like many other airlines, did not see a full comeback until earlier this year, when travel restrictions throughout the globe began to loosen.
Emirates built back its workforce after thousands of layoffs at the start of the pandemic in preparation for a spike in travel demand. However, the airline didn’t ramp up its recruitment efforts until May when recruiters were sent on a “whirlwind” global tour of 30 cities to hand-select new cabin crew.
The airline will dispatch hiring teams to more than 54 countries over the next few months in an effort to find new talent.
Emirates announced on Tuesday: “we have restored more than 90% of our network and more than 80% of the seat capacity before the pandemic. The S”All our Boeing 777 aircraft (151 aircraft) and more than 70 A380 aircraft are currently in service.
There are 121 Airbus A380s in Emirates’ fleet, several of which are still in storage at Dubai World Central Airport. The airline has not confirmed when the entire fleet should be all operational.
“We have employed 6,000 flight attendants in less than one year, and hundreds of pilots and airport workers in Dubai and across our network, and in our various operations,” Sheikh Al Maktoum continued.
Such is the pressure of so many recruits passing through the Emirates training college close to Dubai International Airport that the airline says it aims to start training thousands of new cabin crew in the metaverse.
